“She?”

“Queen with the silver face. Awake again.”

“No. The queen of the Norns? No, that cannot be.” For a moment Jarnulf felt as though God Himself had leaned down from the heavens and slapped him. In an instant, everything that Father had taught him—all his long-held certainties—were flung into confusion. “You are lying to me, animal.” He was desperate to believe it was so. “Everyone knows the queen of the Norns has been in a deathly sleep since the Storm King fell. Thirty years and more! She will never awaken again.”

The giant slowly rose from its crouch, a new light in its eyes. “Bur Yok Kar not lie.” The beast had recognized Jarnulf’s momentary loss of attention, and even as he realized it himself, the giant took a step toward him. Although half the length of the treetop platform still separated them, the creature set one of its huge, knobbed feet on the head of his spear, pinning it flat against the tethered logs. “Ask again. What name you, little man?”

Angry and more than a little alarmed at his own miscalculation, Jarnulf rose and took a slow step backward, closer to the edge of the platform. He shifted his balance to his back foot. “Name? I have many. Some call me the White Hand.”

“White Hand?” The giant took another shuffling step toward him, still keeping the spear pinned. “No! In North we hear of White Hand. Big warrior, great killer—not skinny like you.” The creature made a huffing noise, a kind of grunt; Jarnulf thought it might be a laugh. “See! You put spear down. Hunter, warrior, never put spear down.” The giant was near enough now that he could smell the stench of the rotting human flesh in its nails and teeth, as well as the odor of the beast itself, a sour tang so fierce it cut through even the stiff, cold wind. “Ate young ones like you before.” The corpse-giant was grinning now, its eyes mere slits as it contemplated the pleasure of a live meal. “Soft. Meat come off bones easy.”

“I am finished with you, Godless one. I have learned what I needed to know.” But in truth Jarnulf now wanted only to escape, to go somewhere and try to make sense of what the creature had told him. The Norn Queen awake? The Norns preparing for war? Such things simply could not be.

“You finish? With me?” The huff of amusement again, followed by the carrion stench. Even as the giant leaned toward him its head still loomed high above Jarnulf’s, and he was now within reach of those long, long arms as well. This monster might be old, might have to scavenge its meals from burial platforms, but it still weighed perhaps three times what he did and had him trapped in a high, small place. Jarnulf took one last step back, feeling with his heel for the edge of the platform. Beyond that was only a long drop through sharp branches to the stony ground.

Not even enough snow to break my fall, he thought. Lord, O Lord, make my arm strong and my heart steadfast in Your name and the name of Your son, Usires the Aedon. As if reminded of the cold, he adjusted his heavy cloak. The giant paid no attention to this small, insignificant movement; instead, the great, leering head bent even closer until it was level with his own. Jarnulf had nowhere to retreat and the corpse-giant knew it. It reached out a massive hand and laid it against the side of Jarnulf’s face in a grotesque parody of tenderness. The fingers curled, each as wide as the shaft of the spear that was now so far out of his reach, but Jarnulf ducked beneath its grasp before it caught at his hair and twisted his head off. Again they stood face to face, man and giant.

“White Hand, you say.” With Jarnulf’s spear pinned to the platform beneath its foot, the beast was in no hurry. “Why they call you that, little Rimmersman?”

“You will not understand—not for a little while, yet. And I was not born in Rimmersgard at all, but in Nakkiga itself.”

The cracked lips curled. “You not Higdaja, you just man. You think Bur Yok Kar stupid?”

“Your problem is not that you are stupid,” Jarnulf said. “Your problem is that you are already dead.” Jarnulf looked down. A moment later the giant looked down too.

Beyond the hilt in Jarnulf’s hand a few inches of silvery blade caught the starlight. The rest of it was already lodged deep in the monster’s stomach. “It is very long, this knife,” Jarnulf explained as the giant’s jaw sagged open. “Long enough that the blood does not stain me, which is why I carry the name White Hand. But my knife is also silent, and sharp as the wind—oh, and cold. Do you feel the cold yet?” With a movement so swift the giant had no time to do more than blink, Jarnulf grabbed the hilt with both hands and yanked upward, dragging the blade from the creature’s waist to the bottom of its ribcage, twisting it as he cut. The great beast let out a howl of astonishment and pain and clapped its huge hands over the wound even as Jarnulf threw himself past it, still holding fast to the hilt of his long knife. As he tumbled into the center of the platform the blade slid back out of the beast’s hairy stomach, freeing a slide of guts and blood. The monster howled once more, then lifted dripping hands to the distant stars as if to fault them for letting such a thing happen. By the time it came staggering toward him, innards dangling, Jarnulf had regained his spear.

He had no time to turn the long shaft around, so he grabbed it and charged. He rammed the rounded butt-end of the shaft into the bloody hole in the giant’s midsection, freeing a bellow of agony from the creature that nearly deafened him. The logs beneath them bounced and swayed, and snow pattered down from the laden branches above as the giant thrashed and howled and plucked at the spear-shaft, but Jarnulf crouched low and braced himself, then began to push forward, hunched over the spear as its butt-end dug deep into the monster’s vitals.

The corpse-giant staggered backward, arms swinging like windmill vanes, mouth a hole that seemed too big for its head, then it suddenly vanished over the side of the tree-burial platform. Jarnulf heard it crashing through the branches as it fell, then a heavy thump as it hit the ground, followed by silence.

Jarnulf leaned out, keeping a strong grasp on the edge of the platform. His head felt light and his muscles were all quivering. The giant lay sprawled at the bottom of the tree in a tangle of overlong limbs. Jarnulf could not make out all of it through the intervening branches, but saw a pool of blackness beneath it spreading into the mounded snow.

Careless, he berated himself. And it almost cost me my life. God cannot be proud of me for that. But what the thing said had startled him badly.

Might the giant have lied? But why? The monster would have no reason to do so. The Silver Queen was awake, it had said, and so the North was coming awake as well. That certainly explained the giants now pushing down into Rimmersgard, as well as rumors Jarnulf had heard of Hikeda’ya warriors being spotted in places where they had not been seen for years. Certainly the border was as active as he had ever known it, with Nakkiga troops and their scouts everywhere. But if the giant had actually spoken the truth, it meant that Jarnulf had been wrong about many important things. He had stepped onto a bridge he thought safe only to find it cracking beneath him when it was far too late to turn back.

So Father’s murderer is not gone—not lost in the dream lands and as good as dead, but alive and planning for war again. That means everything I have done, the lives I have taken, the terror I have tried to spread among the Hikeda’ya . . . has all been pointless. The monster is awake.

Until this moment Jarnulf had believed he was God’s avenger—not just God’s, but Father’s as well. Now he had been proved a fool.

He watched from the platform until he was quite sure the giant was dead and his own limbs had stopped trembling, then he tossed his spear over the side and began to climb down. The wind was strengthening, bringing snow out of the north; by the time he reached the ground Jarnulf was dusted in white. He cleaned the blood and offal from his spear, then used his long, achingly sharp knife to cut off the giant’s head. He set the monster’s head in the crotch of a wide branch near the base of the burial tree, the eyes lifelessly black and stretched wide in their last surprise, the fanged mouth gaping foolishly. He hoped it would serve as a warning to others of its kind to stay away from human settlements, to find some easier forage than the corpses of Rimmersfolk, but just now defending the bodies of dead men and women was not what dominated his thoughts.